Tightening the ban on a cow medicine can save India’s vultures
In just over a decade, crores of vultures have died from kidney failure after feeding on cattle carcasses laced with an anti-inflammatory drug.
On October 8, 2020, eight satellite-tagged white-rumped vultures that were bred in captivity were released from an aviary near the Pinjore vulture conservation breeding centre in northern Haryana. The project had been in the works for years.
“We monitored vulture populations in a 100-km radius of the aviary,” said Vibhu Prakash, deputy director of Bombay Natural History Society, a conservation NGO. “We also monitored the area for [vulture-toxic] drugs, the food availability, diet and everything.” Around 300 captive vultures, divided between three species – white-rumped, Indian and slender-billed – are fed and housed in Pinjore, in the foothills of the Himalayas in India.